Acer Predator G6 Review and Ratings

Editors’ Rating:

Our Verdict:
You may or may not be keen on the industrial-looking outside--and the cramped inside gave us pause—but the Predator G6 undeniably brings on the frames for PC gamers tied to 1080p and 1440p monitors. Read More…

What We Liked…

Effective gaming performance for 1080p, 1440p, and light 4K play

Included mouse and keyboard are much better than average

Runs quiet while gaming

Automatic overclocking

Hot-swap hard drive bay

What We Didn’t…

Polarizing design

Outer construction feels plasticky

Cramped inside, given the size of the outer shell

Acer Predator G6 Review

Table of Contents

Introduction & Design

Here in 2016, high-end gaming desktop towers are getting renewed love from the big players in the PC field. This has been especially apparent since Intel introduced its 6th-Generation “Skylake” processors in fall 2015, about the same time Acer rolled out its new Predator gaming desktop line.

With the exception of the Alienware, none is as audacious in appearance as these new Acer Predator desktops, however. The new Predator lineup forks in two: the Predator G3, and the Predator G6. We’re reviewing the latter, which is the most powerful gaming desktop Acer offers. For $1,999 as tested (and at this early March 2016 writing, about $1,859 street price, shopping around), our review model has all of the components necessary to help it push pixels for PC gaming at resolutions beyond 1080p. Although it has “only” the regular Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 4GB graphics card, not the high-end GeForce GTX 980 Ti, it’s still suitable for 4K gaming. You might have to mix and match some of the settings to get satisfactory frame rates at that resolution in demanding games, but it’s 4K-capable.

Apart from the GeForce GTX 980, the G6 has Intel’s fastest quad-core mainstream processor, the “Skylake” Core i7-6700K, running at a 4GHz stock speed. It can spurt to 4.2GHz in its Turbo Boost mode, and as we’ll discuss later in the benchmark rundown, you can overclock it, mildly, via the Predator’s built-in overclocking feature. Also included is 16GB of RAM in a two-8GB-DIMM configuration, a 256GB M.2 SSD, and a 2TB hard drive. Apart from the one-step-down graphics card, that’s about as stacked as mainstream gaming PCs come these days.

Acer offers the Predator G6 in three configurations as of this writing, of which ours was the priciest. All include the Core i7-6700K processor. The lowest-spec model is $1,499 and includes GeForce GTX 970 graphics, 8GB of RAM, a 128GB solid-state drive (SSD), and 1TB of drive space. The $1,599 mid-tier model is essentially the same as the base model, the only difference being it doubles the RAM, from 8GB to 16GB.

The Predator G6, as we tested it, is right around the desktop-PC price point where we’d expect to see a GeForce GTX 980 Ti inside. Unlike the desktops we’ve tested that do include the GTX 980 Ti, however, the Predator G6 includes good-quality gaming peripherals, in this case from known-quantity SteelSeries. These are quite the step up from the basic USB keyboard-and-mouse combo included with most big-box desktops. That may not be a fair trade-off if you’re looking solely for the fastest performance you can get for your money, but it could be if you’re interested in a more complete package. As it stands, the Predator G6 just needs a monitor (and of course, your games) to complete the setup, and the GTX 980 is quite sufficient for gaming at 1080p or even 1440p without compromise.

But a sticking point on this machine for some users? The look. This is as far from a wallflower PC as we’ve ever seen.

Design

It’s one thing for a gaming computer to look like it’s meant to play games. Gaming towers are known for edgy, futuristic exteriors, complete with LED mood illumination and design accents, and perhaps even a custom paint scheme. It’s something else, however, for a gaming computer to look like it came out of a video game—and a rather scary one, at that.

That’s the case (pun entirely intended) with the Acer Predator G6. We never did settle on one way to describe it, bouncing between “tank treads,” “spare tire,” and “conveyor belt.” Whichever one Acer intended—and we’re sure it’s one of the three—it’s a polarizing look, to be sure. Intimidating on a good day, perhaps. Industrial-chic, to be charitable. Pretty? Certainly never.

The exterior is one giant plastic shell. The tread-like pieces cover the top and front, and even go along the bottom of the exterior...

Once you remove the side panel, however, you’ll see it’s just a mid-ATX tower inside, though the sheer amount of outer plastic makes it look much bigger…

The Predator measures 21.8 inches high and 18.2 inches long. Compare this to the competing Lenovo IdeaCentre Y900, which is almost two inches shorter. At the rear of the desktop, you can reach under the top piece and use it as a sturdy carrying handle. It feels lighter than its 35-pound weight would suggest, though that’s because of the massive outer shell.

The plastic exterior is one of this desktop’s shortcomings. It feels hollow and a bit cheap, two terms that shouldn’t be applied to any desktop this expensive. In addition, it makes no pretense that it’s not plastic through and through—no metal accents or otherwise, no faux carbon-fiber like on Lenovo’s machines. The fact that Acer’s logo is merely printed on the front doesn’t add much in the way of cred. The bare gray-steel case, visible from the rear of the desktop only, helps even less…

It should be painted to match the color of the rest of the chassis, but it looks like it’s merely embedded there in all that plastic. Matching paint almost goes unsaid at this price point.

The Predator does rather well when it comes to port selection, as most full-size desktops tend to do. On the rear, the power supply is top-mounted. Under that, you’ll find the motherboard’s port selection. Its video-output ports (made redundant by the video card) are awkwardly blocked off by stickers, though. There really should be rubber stoppers in them, like on many competing units…

You’ll find four USB 3.0 ports below those, two USB 2.0 ports and an Ethernet jack below that, and a trio of audio ports at the bottom, for headphone, microphone, and S/PDIF optical. The GTX 980 graphics card has two full-size DisplayPort and HDMI outputs, plus a DVI-D port. The presumption, we suppose, is that you will use HDMI or the optical output for the main audio feed; the usual array of additional analog output jacks for surround speakers is not present on this motherboard.

On the front of the desktop, you’ll find an SD flash-memory-card reader, two USB 3.0 ports, and headphone and microphone jacks…

The optical-drive bay, populated in our review unit by a Blu-ray reader, pops out by pressing the red, printed-on arrow to the right of the Predator logo…

That’s the rudiments of the outside. Let’s look next at the chassis lighting, and what's on the inside.